Screen LibrarySpinoza's metaphysics : substance and thought /
"Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using exten...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Published: |
Oxford University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | Oxford : |
| Publication Dates: |
2015. c2013 |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: | English |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
"Yitzhak Melamed here offers a new and systematic interpretation of the core of Spinoza's metaphysics. In the first part of the book, he proposes a new reading of the metaphysics of substance in Spinoza: he argues that for Spinoza modes both inhere in and are predicated of God. Using extensive textual evidence, he shows that Spinoza considered modes to be God's propria. He goes on to clarify Spinoza's understanding of infinity, mereological relations, infinite modes, and the flow of finite things from God's essence. In the second part of the book, Melamed relies on this interpretation of the substance-mode relation and the nature of infinite modes and puts forward two interrelated theses about the structure of the attribute of Thought and its overarching role in Spinoza's metaphysics. First, in his final main thesis, Melamed argues that, for Spinoza, ideas have a multifaceted (in fact, infinitely faceted) structure that allows one and the same idea to represent the infinitely many modes which are parallel to it in the infinitely many attributes. Thought turns out to be coextensive with the whole of nature. Spinoza cannot embrace an idealist reduction of Extension to Thought because of his commitment to the conceptual separation of the attributes. Yet, within Spinoza's metaphysics, Thought clearly has primacy over the other attributes insofar as it is the only attribute which is an elaborate, as complex, and, in some senses, as powerful as God."--Dust Jacket. |
| Carrier Form: | xxii, 232 pages ; 25 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 205-216) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780190237349 (paperback) : 0190237341 (paperback) 9780195394054 (alkaline paper) 0195394054 (alkaline paper) |
| Index Number: | B3999 |
| CLC: | B563.1 |
| Call Number: | B563.1/M517 |
| Contents: | Spinoza's metaphysics of substance -- Substance-mode relation as a relation of inherence and predication -- Immanent cause, acosmism, and the distinction between "modes of God" and "modes of an attribute" -- Inherence, causation, and conception -- Infinite modes -- Spinoza's metaphysics of thought -- Spinoza's two doctrines of parallelism -- Multifaceted structure of ideas and the priority of thought. |